Creative Conversations

I’m not looking for sympathy here, but I feel compelled to say this: art and culture writers have tough jobs. Finding worthy leads to follow is not the demanding part; neither is reviewing, which you can learn on the beat. But getting artists to talk about their work? That’s a different story. It is easier to chat up random strangers in the street, than get some of our artists to sing about the thoughts and processes that govern their output.

To be sure, there are exceptions to that rule. I’ve had a wonderful time interviewing Sudhir Patwardhan, who is as gentle as he is eloquent, qualities that underline most of his cityscapes. Both Reena Saini and her husband Jitish Kallat, who I met recently, are not only articulate, they are also patient and engaging in their explanations. More often than not, however, I have to struggle to put together a structured interview; a process that leaves me feeling a bit guilty. The artist’s job really is to make art, not to offer lengthy elucidations on the subject, often in a language they might not be comfortable with.

So it was with utter delight and surprise that I listened to Bharti Kher talk about her practice this last weekend at Sunaparanta-Goa Centre for the Arts. Housed in a beautiful bungalow in Panjim’s Altinho Hills area, the centre is hosting the second edition of its arts and literature festival, Sensorium. Curated around the theme of love, Sensorium brings together the work of several contemporary artists including Mithu Sen, A Ramachandran, Atul and Anju Dodiya, Thukral & Tagra, Anita Dube, and Chitra Ganesh. If you choose to visit it, I’d point you to a particularly lovely installation by Tushar Joag, Remember you each night, where each broken object is a reminder of a lost love.

The Centre has also been inviting artists to talk about their work, and the presentation by Kher, (whose 2006 sculpture, The Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own, created auction history in 2010 when it breached the $1-million mark, a record for a female contemporary Indian artist) was part of that. She spoke about her beloved art teacher, Martin Shaw, and the rigours of art school; about meeting a rice engraver at Dilli Haat who she went on to collaborate with for Sing to them that will listen (2008), where she displayed 2,50,000 grains engraved with matrimonial ads; about her inhibitions regarding working with sex workers whose bodies she used for life-size plaster casts for an upcoming exhibit.

Refreshingly, she didn’t make a single reference either to her 2006 sculpture or to the ‘sperm bindis’ that are such an important motif in her work.

But the part of the conversation that continues to linger with me is when she was asked about failure. “You have to allow your material to fail,” she said. “The first thing I do when I start a new work, is to soil the paper with my hands.”

It isn’t every day that you can draw such a rare, beautiful image informing a profound thought from an artist, one that offers such a keen insight into an artist’s discipline. But it’s well worth the wait.